Authors: Gigi Moore
Desiree looked at him and his cock reacted just like his heart had earlier, throbbing almost painfully in his jeans.
What was it about this one woman that near drove him to his knees when he hadn’t even kissed or held her yet? Was it that he hadn’t been with a woman in so long he’d forgotten what it was like and now was focusing all that pent-up energy on one of the first halfway intriguing, undoubtedly beautiful women he had come across in a while?
Court her? Sam didn’t think he’d make it through the process without losing his mind.
Desiree lifted the basket. “It’s for you and your brother, if you’re willing to share.”
Sam beat down the flash of possessiveness that made him see red for a moment at her comment. Share? He was a pretty laid-back, generous guy overall, but it depended on what and with whom she was talking about. He and his brother had been through a lot and he wasn’t closer to another being on the planet. He supposed if he got right down to it, he would share his most prized possession with Carson, and only Carson. “So what do you have there?”
“Authentic Louisiana pecan pie. At least I’m hoping you think so.”
“You made it?”
She nodded. “I thought you and Carson could tell me whether I’ve hit the mark or not. You guys are the only Cajuns I know of on the premises, besides your mother that is.”
“I’d be honored to be your Cajun guinea pig.”
“You might not think so once you taste it, even if it is your mother’s recipe.”
Sam chuckled, lifting the linen cloth to peek beneath. He lowered his nose and inhaled deep. “Smells good.”
Not as good as you, though.
He was a second away from blurting it out but bit his tongue, somehow knowing it wouldn’t go over too well with this prim and proper woman, at least not yet, anyway. He knew he was going to have to earn the privilege and do a lot of softening her up.
Save it for later.
“You’re being nice.”
Sam reached into the basket to scoop out one of the presliced pieces of pie with the spatula inside and took a bite of the pie without hesitation.
“How is it?”
He tried not to laugh around the food in his mouth, continued chewing it all, and swallowing before responding. “Impatient little thing, aren’t you?”
She blushed. “It’s just that I’ve been working on this for a week, trying to get everything just right, like your mother’s…”
As she let her words drift off, Sam mentally filled in the blanks. It was plain to see the woman was a stickler in everything she did. Getting every ingredient just right in a pie would be no different to her than dotting every i and crossing every t on a tax return she prepared for a client. She’d want the end result to be the same—perfection. He could see all this a mile away even if he didn’t spend that much time around her. He knew her type, from the glossy copper hair on her head to the unscuffed, shiny toes of her boots, he knew her. He wanted to know her even better. He wanted to take her hair out of that perpetual ponytail, run his hands through and muss it up, see if it proved as soft as it looked. “This is delicious.”
“Like your mom’s?” she asked, eagerness lighting her gaze.
“It’s different.” Sam watched her pout and almost laughed out loud. He wanted to kiss the sulk right off her full lips. Instead, he explained. “Different isn’t bad. No two Cajun or Creole cooks make the same dish the same way, even when they use the same exact ingredients. Each cook puts her mark on a recipe, no matter how small.” He paused here, giving her a meaningful look. “I like your mark.”
He didn’t realize he had closed the space between them until she took a step back, face flaming red as if the temperature in the barn had shot up twenty degrees.
God, why did he just say that? He was going to scare the woman away before he could even begin to court her.
Thanks to Maia for putting a word to something that had been nothing more than an amorphous concept before now.
Desiree took another step back toward the door. “Well, I’d better go.”
“To find Carson?”
She nodded and reached behind her to open the door.
Good luck with that, Sam thought. If he thought he had scared her, he imagined Carson’s gruff, remote manner would downright terrify her.
Sam licked his lips again as he watched her leave, tasting remnants of the appetizing pie as he appreciated how the denim of her jeans hugged her luscious ass, the way her hips swung back and forth in a natural, seductive sway.
He fought the impulse to follow Desiree and hoped his brother had better luck with her than Sam had. He hoped Carson didn’t mess things up for the both of them.
Chapter 4
Boredom was a dangerous thing. Oh, sure, it had led to some interesting self-discoveries and skill sets over the years. Overall, however, like the inclination that had led her out to the barn to test out her latest culinary masterpiece on Helena’s youngest son, boredom proved, like idle hands, to be the devil’s playground.
What other possible reason did she have for seeking out Sam Quarry to sample her creation, aside from letting Maia goad her into being “friendlier” and getting to know the residents of the ranch a little better? Like her life wasn’t fine the way it was? Like she wasn’t perfectly okay living and keeping to herself the way she always had?
The more she thought about it, however, the more sense it made to do like her sister said and get to know the people on the ranch, be friendlier. What good did moving halfway across the country do her if she was going to take the same baggage with her and be the same stiff, stick-in-the-mud person she had been in New York? Colorado was supposed to be a new beginning for her, a fresh start, and even though it wasn’t Vegas, she intended for anything that happened here to stay here.
Despite being on the ranch almost a year, Desiree hadn’t thought of Colorado with any sort of permanence before a couple of weeks ago, but the more she hung around Helena and her very capable cooking staff, the more she realized she liked the ranch and the people who lived and worked on it. Heck, it was just a hop and a skip from hanging out with Helena and her cooking crew to watching the cowboys and other hands proceed with their daily chores and ranch operations and even help with some of the work when time from her career permitted.
Tracking down the taciturn Carson after spending an enjoyable if also nerve-racking time with his brother Sam proved a horse of another color altogether.
Approaching Sam had been an experiment, a way to ease out of her comfort zone. Finding him with Maia, however, had been as much of a shock as the flash of jealousy that shot through Desiree at the sight of her sister wrapped around the young cowboy.
Seeing the lust for Desiree shining out of Sam’s eyes once Maia left had been a jolting wake-up call that had Desiree loath to consider that her sister might be onto something.
My visions don’t lie, Desi. They may not always be clear and detailed, but they don’t lie.
Wasn’t that the truth? Maia’s visions rarely spelled things out, were rarely black and white. They always seemed so full of ambiguity and symbolism that only Maia could interpret them. What good did that do anyone, especially Desiree? What good
had
it done her? What good was any of it if it couldn’t prevent what had happened to Desiree five years ago? For some reason, however, these most recent visions, the ones involving Sam, Carson and Desiree, were as clear as a bell, or so Maia said.
The idea should have emboldened her, made her eager to find Carson and
test
Maia’s visions, but how could Desiree trust what her sister saw? How could she believe that she was meant to be with two men when she had yet to have a successful relationship with one?
She would have done better to have just left the basket with Sam and let him hunt up his brother, except that she wanted to get feedback from the horse’s mouth. She wanted to see Carson, conquer her fear, and prove to herself that he wasn’t as intimidating as she had made him out to be. He wasn’t the big bad wolf in her dreams, as whimsical as that sounded and despite Maia’s visions. He was just a man after all, granted one shrouded in privacy and arrogance, but a man nonetheless. She had handled tougher than him before. She had survived much worse.
She had to admit, however, once she found out Carson was occupied at the Western town, doing his part in the daily exhibitions that took place there, she’d breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn’t be alone with Sam’s older brother.
Desiree made her way over to the make-believe Old West town before she lost her nerve, feeling a bit like Little Red Riding Hood with her basket of goodies for Grandma. Only she wasn’t going to visit Grandma but the big bad wolf.
Stop it! There are no such things as werewolves no matter what you saw in your dreams. No matter how many shifters you read about in all those paranormal romances on your bookshelves, they simply do not exist in real life.
She had seen the Western town in passing, impressed, even at a distance, with its authenticity and the attention to detail that Jax Reynolds had put into it, but she’d never lingered or participated in the regularly scheduled staged shootouts. They were a popular attraction among The Double R’s guests and, she’d heard from Maia, a real blast. Even their mother had gone to the target range in the town and fired off some rounds.
Desiree didn’t like guns, though, didn’t see the need for them. Guns killed more innocent people than not, and invariably when they were kept in a house for “protection,” someone tragically wound up the victim of mistaken identity or a misfire. On a modern working ranch she didn’t see where there was much difference from the urban jungle, except for the needed rifle to run off stray wild animals now and again.
Maybe it was her background with stats, but she believed in hard-core facts. She believed in numbers, not the allure of a righteous man and his gun against an evil and wild world.
The sound of gunfire reached Desiree’s ears as she neared the outskirts of the town, second thoughts beginning to hound her.
She’d made more than enough pie to accommodate any extra cowboys who might be participating in the shootout. However, only one opinion really mattered to her.
Two sets of Western-clad figures ran from the town’s bank. The first set comprised of three outlaws with bandanas tied around their noses and mouths. The second comprised of two lawmen giving chase, one of whom remained Carson Quarry.
Desiree’s heart did a little Texas two-step in her chest when he dove to the side and behind a watering trough to evade one of the outlaw’s bullets.
The sights and sounds were so genuine that Desiree had a hard time convincing herself not to fear for the lawmen’s lives as the outlaws fired on them. Intellectually, she knew they weren’t in any real danger, that the bullets were blanks and that the blood spurting from the deputy’s chest as he fell back against the bank façade was fake. Viscerally, however, she felt the danger and, if she was being honest with herself, the thrill of what she was watching.
She got so engrossed in the action in front of her she barely noticed the shouts of the spectators to her right watching the action at a safe distance in the unobtrusive bleacher seats. Unlike her, who stood right in the path of the outlaws as they spurred their horses into a gallop and headed for the outskirts of town, Carson on their heels.
Desiree heard the shouted warnings as the three horses barreled toward her on a collision course and stood rooted to the spot. Indecision was her worst enemy, but she couldn’t bring herself to move before the lead horses reached her.
Carson kicked his stallion into gear, speeding past the other animals and veering in front of them as he reached down an arm to scoop Desiree up into the saddle with him.
She had a moment to yelp as he decelerated enough to let her settle into her seat behind him and wrap both her arms about his waist with everything in her.
“Ohmygod! Oh God, oh God, oh God!” Desiree squeezed her eyes closed as she pressed her face against his back, inhaling the fresh, laundered scent of his shirt. Clean and musky mixed together with all male and instantly made her moist between her legs.